Sarah’s family certainly has a rough go of it. And the Times would lead us to believe, just as the aforementioned Government Rescue Plan, that Sarah’s family and those like them are victims:

There is a myth in America: if you have a strong moral compass, work hard and make good choices, you will have equal opportunity. But after two years of listening to and documenting low-income families in rural America…we have witnessed a starkly unequal playing field.

Yet we see a family with an absent father, a mother with little education who must be away from her seven children for long stretches while she works, and a 15 year old girl who now faces repeating the cycle of lack of education, raising a child at a young age, and dependence of government programs to make ends meet as the norm. How can this possibly be an example of a strong moral compass and good choices? Rather, it seems as if this family is adrift with no steering mechanism and no way to discern a good choice from a devastating one.